The present application relates to a thickness-information acquisition apparatus, a thickness-information acquisition method adopted by the thickness-information acquisition apparatus, a thickness-information acquisition program for implementing the thickness-information acquisition method and a microscope employing the thickness-information acquisition apparatus.
In pathology, a biological sample such as a tissue segment is fixed on a piece of slide glass and subjected to a dyeing process as well as an inclusion process in order to make the sample which can be used as a prepared tissue slide of a microscope. In general, if the storage period of the prepared tissue slide serving as a biological sample is long, the visibility of the prepared tissue slide to the microscope deteriorates due to causes such as deterioration of the biological sample and the color degradation of the sample. In addition, in some cases, the prepared tissue slide of a microscope is examined microscopically at a facility outside a hospital (or another facility) at which the prepared tissue slide has been typically made. In such cases, the prepared tissue slide is delivered from the hospital (or the other facility) to the facility outside the hospital (or the other facility) generally by post. Thus, it takes certain time to deliver the prepared tissue slide.
In order to solve the problems described above, there has been proposed an apparatus for keeping image data of a biological sample. For more information on the proposed apparatus, the reader is advised to refer to documents such as Japanese Patent Laid-open No. 2009-175334.